Evaluating a low-cost self-manufactured Coaxial

Open-Ended Probe for the Measurement of the

Complex Permittivity of Granular Media
2021 13th International Conference on Electromagnetic Wave Interaction with Water and Moist Substances (ISEMA) | 978-1-7281-8738-9/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ISEMA49699.2021.9508322

Juan D. González-Teruel Scott B. Jones Jaime Giménez-Gallego

Dept. of Automatics, Electrical Dept. of Plants, Soils and Climate Dept. of Automatics, Electrical
Engineering and Electronic Technology Utah State University Engineering and Electronic Technology
Technical University of Cartagena Logan, UT, USA Technical University of Cartagena
Cartagena, Murcia, Spain scott.jones@usu.edu Cartagena, Murcia, Spain
juando.gonzalez@upct.es jaime.gimenez@upct.es
Antonio José Lozano-Guerrero
David A. Robinson Dept. of Information and Roque Torres-Sánchez
UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Communications Technology Dept. of Automatics, Electrical
ECW Technical University of Cartagena Engineering and Electronic Technology
Bangor, Wales, UK Cartagena, Murcia, Spain Technical University of Cartagena
davi2@ceh.ac.uk antonio.lozano@upct.es Cartagena, Murcia, Spain
roque.torres@upct.es

Abstract—The measurement of the dielectric properties on
moist substances has been proven to provide valuable
information on the estimation of water content. Furthermore,
the dielectric frequency spectrum seems promising as a source
of information for the indirect determination of other useful
physico-chemical properties of porous media, such as in soils.
Access to dielectric spectroscopy measurements is limited due to
the high cost and quality of the equipment used. Here, we
evaluate the performance of a low-cost, self-manufactured open-
ended coaxial probe for the measurement of the complex
permittivity in the 10 to 500 MHz frequency range. The
experimental probe is compared with a commercial model for
measuring the dielectric properties of reference liquids. The
tested probe has been found to provide accurate and reliable
measurements of the complex permittivity, according to the
reference values from the literature, for 50 to 500 MHz.
Keywords—open-ended coaxial probe, low-cost, frequency
domain, spectroscopy.
I. INTRODUCTION
The dielectric properties are well documented to be related
to other useful physical properties of porous media and are
extensively used to obtain the latter indirectly. Among them,
the moisture of porous media has always been of special
interest because of the importance of water. The measurement
of the permittivity is widely used to determine this physical
property in foodstuffs, soils, rocks, snow, etc., based on the
great difference between the dielectric constant of air (εr ≈ 1),
solids (εr ≈ 5) and water (εr ≈ 80). The water content is
normally related with an apparent permittivity, when using
Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) [1], [2], or with the real
part of the permittivity when it is measured in its complex
form [3]–[5]. However, the function that relates permittivity
and water content in porous media is not unique. There exists
a n-dimensional function that relates both properties, where n-
1 is the number of other physical properties that have an effect
in the dielectric response, such us bulk density, bulk DC
conductivity, temperature, solid particle composition, solid
particles shape or phase configuration. Some of these
properties, as for the case of temperature and bulk DC
conductivity, can be easily determined simultaneously, but the
other properties require extensive ex-situ analysis to be
Funding by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Ministry
of Education and Vocational Training and the European Agricultural Funds
for Rural Development, grant numbers: AGL2016-77282-C33-R,
FPU17/05155, PID2019-106226-C22/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.
978-1-7281-8738-9/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
determined. Therefore, if accuracy in the in-situ measurement
of water content is to be achieved, there should be an
alternative that indirectly allows all these properties to be
taken into account.
In the foreword of Electromagnetic Aquametry [6],
Reinhard Knöchel stated that using two dielectric variables,
not only the water content of a sample could be determined,
but also the bulk density, thus leading to the density
independent moisture measurement and vice-versa. This
could be achieved by measuring the real and imaginary parts
of the complex permittivity, εr*, and taking into account the
influence of the bulk DC conductivity in the latter. Knöchel
[6] also indicated that to consider the effect of many other
constituents on the permittivity spectrum, a dielectric multi-
parameter measurement would then be required, which could
be fulfilled by means of a multi-frequency measurement,
being the frequencies distanced enough apart to provide
distinct information.
In this regard, Hilhorst [6], [7] accounted for the soil
texture and bulk density effects on the permittivity spectrum
by measuring the permittivity at different frequencies in the
range from 10 to 30 MHz and compensating for the Maxwell-
Wagner effect. Szypłowska et al. [8] and González-Teruel et
al. [9] showed the influence of soil texture and soil particles
surface charge in the dielectric dispersion from Vector
Network Analyzer (VNA) measurements. Wagner et al. [10]
obtained the dielectric relaxation spectra of a clayey soil using
a VNA in the 1 MHz to 10 GHz frequency range from
reflection and transmission S-parameters and applied
multivariate methods to relate the dielectric spectra with the
volumetric water content, porosity and matric potential of the
samples. A physical relationship between the soil dielectric
relaxation and the soil water characteristics was found.
Additionally, the increasing number of frequency domain
mixing models in the literature supports the potential to relate
the dielectric spectrum to the physico-chemical properties of
soils.
VNAs have proven to be a reliable option to study the
radio-frequency and microwave dielectric spectroscopy [11]–
[16]. Reflection and transmission techniques are widely used

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 to obtain the complex permittivity of soil samples, the latter
being especially convenient for high-permittivity samples
with reflection factors near -1 [16]. Reflection measurements
are simpler and easier to perform, since only one measurement
port is needed. For one-port dielectric measurements, the
open-ended coaxial probe is extensively used due to its
simplicity and facility to obtain the permittivity from the
measured reflection coefficient [13]. Commercial open-ended
probes are relatively expensive, as well as VNAs, which limits
their availability to low-budgets. Nonetheless, VNAs can be
commonly found in technological laboratories, due to their
wide applicability in different fields of research and the fact
that they usually integrate other functions, such as Impedance
Analyzer or Spectrum Analyzer. However, open-ended
coaxial probes are not as widely applicable, so a low-cost
alternative approach might be of interest for those who already
have a VNA. Here, we evaluate the performance of a self-
manufactured, low-cost, open-ended coaxial probe from a
SMA-N coaxial adapter to measure the complex permittivity
of granular media. We compared the manufactured and a
commercial Speag DAK-12 open-ended probes in the
measurement frequency range from 10 MHz to 900MHz, both
tested with reference dielectric media, and obtained the
complex permittivity of granular media between 50 – 500
MHz.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
A. Experimental Setup
An open-ended coaxial probe was manufactured by
cutting-off a Telegärtner male SMA to male N 50 Ω coaxial
adapter and flattening and smoothing the N side with a lathe
and a fine grit sand paper, respectively [13], [17], as depicted
in Fig. 1. The N side was chosen to be the open end as to have
a greater area of contact with the Material Under Test (MUT).
The dimensions of the manufactured probe are specified in
Table I. The probe was connected through a LMR-240 UF to
two different commercial VNA models: i) Agilent 4395A with
the 43961A RF Impedance Test Kit and ii) Rohde & Schwarz
ZVA 67 to measure the one-port S-parameters. A Speag
DAK-12 open-ended coaxial probe connected to the Rohde &
Schwarz ZVA 67 was used as a validation measurement set.
TABLE I. DIMENSIONS OF THE MANUFACTURED OPEN-ENDED
COAXIAL PROBE IN MM.
D1 D2 D3
12 7.3 2.3
Fig. 2. Open-ended coaxial probe manufactured from a SMA to N coaxial
adapter.
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Fig. 1. Designed sample holder with the open-ended coaxial probe placed at
the bottom (a) and with glass beads packing sample (b).
The S11*(f) complex parameters were recorded with the
Agilent 4395A by means of a General Purpose Interface Bus
(GPIB) and using the IntuiLink software [18] in Microsoft
Excel; the specific software provided by the company was
used in the case of the Rohde & Schwarz ZVA 67. The
measurements were carried out in the frequency range from
10 MHz to 500 MHz with the Agilent4395A and from 10 to
900 MHz with the Rohde & Schwarz ZVA 67. The
temperature of the samples was measured with a
thermocouple Type K Comark C28 [19].
The self-manufactured probe was tested with liquid and
granular samples. The former were placed in a beaker and the
probe immersed in the sample from above, whereas for the
latter a cylindrical sample holder was designed to place the
probe at the bottom, thus avoiding the sample disturbance, as
depicted in Fig. 2.
B. Calibration Procedure
A two-step process was followed to calibrate the
measurement set. On the first step, Open, Short and Load (50
Ω) (OSL) standards were connected to the end of the coaxial
cable to calibrate the set at the interface plane between the
coaxial cable and the open-ended coaxial probe. On a second
step, we connected the open-ended coaxial probe to the cable
and followed the Open-Water-Liquid (OWL) calibration
procedure described in Wagner et al. [13] to calculate the
complex permittivity εr*(f) from the complex S11*(f)
parameters measured with the VNAs.
C. Calibration and Test Media
To calibrate the open-ended coaxial probes and then
validate the permittivity measurements, air, distilled water and
high purity organic liquids were used. We chose acetone
(99%), isopropanol (98.5%), methanol (96%) and ethylene-
glycol (99%), covering a wide range of permittivity values.
Reference relative complex permittivity values of the liquids
were obtained from the literature, according to different
dielectric relaxation models. The distilled water complex
permittivity spectrum was modeled with the Debye equation
[20] from data in Kaatze [21]; acetone with the Cole-Cole
equation from data in Buckley and Maryott [22]; methanol,
isopropanol and ethylene-glycol with the Debye, double
Debye and Havriliak-Negami equations, respectively, from
Gregory and Clarke [23] and the relative permittivity of air
was considered to be constant in the frequency domain (εr =
1).
1 and 2 mm mono-sized glass beads were used to validate
the self-manufactured probe in granular media. The relative
effective permittivity (εeff) of glass beads mixed either with air
 or distilled water was modelled with the 2-phase Maxwell
Garnett mixing equation [24], [25], given as:
𝜀𝜀𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒𝑒 = 𝜀𝜀𝑒𝑒 + 3𝑓𝑓𝜀𝜀𝑒𝑒 �
𝜀𝜀𝑖𝑖 −𝜀𝜀𝑒𝑒
� (1)
𝜀𝜀𝑖𝑖 +2𝜀𝜀𝑒𝑒 −𝑓𝑓(𝜀𝜀𝑖𝑖 −𝜀𝜀𝑒𝑒 )
where f is the volumetric fraction of the solid inclusions
(=1 − ϕ, where ϕ is the porosity), εe is the permittivity of the
background (water or air) and εi is the permittivity of the
granular inclusions. The permittivity of glass beads was
considered to be 7.6, according to Robinson and Friedman
[26].
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Calibration of the Manufactured Open-Ended Coaxial
Probe
From the S11*(f) data obtained with the Agilent 4395A and
the experimental probe, we applied the second step of the
calibration procedure described in section II-B. We calculated
the complex permittivity of every fluid at the same frequencies
the S11*(f) data were obtained. In the literature, the parameters
of the dielectric relaxation models of the liquids are provided
in steps of 5 or 10 ºC, whereas the temperature of the tested
liquids was between 22 and 23 ºC. In a first approach, before
accounting for the temperature of the liquids in the tests, we
assumed the liquids to be at room temperature (~ 25 ºC) and
adopted the literature dielectric parameters values for either 20
ºC or 25 ºC, subject to availability. However, the obtained
results were not as good as expected, with significant
differences between the literature and the experimentally
complex permittivity values calculated. Therefore, we
measured the liquids temperature and calculated the
intermediate values of the literature dielectric parameters
between 20 and 25 ºC by linear interpolation.
The OWL calibration procedure allows to vary the liquid
used as standard. We obtained a set of the calibration
coefficients by rotating the liquid used as the Liquid standard.
In Table II, the RMSE calculated from the difference between
the estimated complex permittivity, including both real and
imaginary parts, and the literature reference values of the
organic liquids not used in the calibration, is reported. The
calibration liquid which provided a lower error was ethylene
glycol, with a RMSE = 0.8948, followed by methanol (RMSE
= 0.9397). This result is supported by the choice of Wagner et
al. [13], who successfully used pure methanol as the Liquid
standard in the OWL calibration. In Fig. 3, the estimation of
Fig. 3. Real (a) and imaginary (b) permittivity of the tested fluids measured with the Agilent 4395A VNA and the self-manufactured probe (coloured
scatterers) and reference values from the literature (black lines).
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the real (a) and imaginary (b) permittivities of the tested fluids
are compared with the reference values obtained from the
literature, following the method described in Section II-C. The
estimated values of air, ethylene glycol and distilled water
perfectly match with their references, as they were used for
the calibration. In the case of the test liquids, the estimated
permittivity data are specially scattered below 50 MHz, but
always around the reference values for the real permittivity.
That is not the case for the imaginary permittivity, with a
random response below 50 MHz. Above 50 MHz, the
estimation of the complex permittivity is quite close to the
reference values, the case of isopropanol being the most
representative. The mean errors (ME) between the estimated
and reference values between 50 and 500 MHz were
calculated for each liquid, according to (2),
ME = ∑ni|ε�-ε
i i |⁄n (2)
where ε�i is either the real or imaginary estimated permittivity
at the ith frequency, εi is either the real or imaginary literature
reference permittivity at the ith frequency and n is the number
of data in the frequency domain. The ME is presented in Table
III for both real and imaginary parts and each tested liquid.
The poorest estimation found is that of the imaginary part of
methanol, with a ME = 0.7753. Nonetheless, as shown in Fig.
3b, this fact can be attributed to a deviation of the estimation
below 100 MHz, whereas in the rest of the frequency range
the estimates are fairly close to the reference. Thus, we could
assume the ME to be generally lower than 0.65 on the
estimation of either the real or the imaginary part of the
permittivity.
TABLE II. RMSE ON THE ESTIMATION OF THE COMPLEX
PERMITTIVITY IN THE ORGANIC LIQUIDS NOT USED AS STANDARD IN THE
OWL CALIBRATION USING THE AGILENT 4395A VNA AND THE
MANUFACTURED PROBE.
Organic liquid used as Liquid standard
Ethylene
Acetone Isopropanol Methanol
glycol
RMSE 1.0661 1.3097 0.9397 0.8948

TABLE III. MEAN ERROR (ME, EQ. (2)) OF THE ESTIMATION OF
THE REAL AND IMAGINARY PERMITTIVITIES IN THE TEST INORGANIC
LIQUIDS USING THE AGILENT 4395A VNA AND THE MANUFACTURED
PROBE.
Complex Test Liquid
component
Acetone Isopropanol Methanol
Real 0.6462 0.4422 0.3332
Imaginary 0.6330 0.4410 0.7753
B. Comparison of manufactured probe and Speag DAK-12
In order to evaluate the performance of the experimental
probe in comparison with a commercial one, we repeated the
experiments described in the previous section with the self-
manufactured and Speag DAK-12 probes. In this case, the
Rohde and Schwarz (R&S) ZVA 67 was used to obtain the
S11*(f) from 10 to 900 MHz and the OWL method was applied
to calculate εr*(f). In the first instance, it was observed that
there was still a considerable scattering of the permittivity
below 50 MHz, despite using a different VNA and a
commercial open-ended coaxial probe. A similar behaviour
was also reported by Wagner et al. [13] when measuring in
electrically lossy materials and attributed to the electrically
lossless calibration materials. Nonetheless, this case is
different, since electrically lossless materials below 50 MHz
were tested. When analysing the S11*(f) measured in the
different media, it was noticed that there was no clear
distinction among them below 50 MHz with any of the two
probes, which might indicate a lack of selectivity of the probes
in that bandwidth.
In order to make a fair comparison between the probes, the
data below 50 MHz were removed from the analysis. The
RMSE between the estimations and the reference values of
εr*(f) were again calculated by rotating the liquid used as
standard. The lowest errors for the experimental probe and the
Speag DAK-12 were found for acetone (RMSE = 0.3729) and
ethylene glycol (RMSE = 0.5245), respectively. In Fig.4 we
present the absolute value of the total error in the measurement
of the real and imaginary relative permittivities by adding the
errors in each of the three test liquids, i.e., isopropanol,
methanol and ethylene glycol for the self-manufactured probe
and acetone, isopropanol and methanol for the Speag DAK-
12. The total error was defined as,
Fig. 4. Absolute total error on the measurement of the real and imaginary
relative permittivities of the test liquids, with regard to the literature
reference values, by using the Rohde & Schwarz VNA with the Speag DAK-
12 (DAK) and the self-manufactured (SM) probe.
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𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇𝑇 𝐸𝐸𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 (𝑓𝑓) = ∑ni|𝜀𝜀�(𝑓𝑓)
𝚤𝚤 − 𝜀𝜀𝑖𝑖 (𝑓𝑓) | (3)
where ε�(𝑓𝑓)
i is the estimated and εi (𝑓𝑓) the reference
permittivity, either real or imaginary, of the ith test liquid at
the f frequency. The total errors were calculated with regard
to the reference values in the literature and in the frequency
domain to explore if there was a frequency dependence of the
source of error. In general, the greatest error is concentrated
below 100 MHz, where the scattering effect reported below
50 MHz seems to be still falling. From 100 MHz and above
the total error with both probes drops below 1.5 both for the
real and imaginary parts, presenting a slight increase beyond
750 MHz for the Speag DAK-12 probe. The error obtained
with the self-manufactured probe above 150 MHz is slightly
lower than that with the Speag DAK-12.
C. Complex permittivity of granular media
Once the self-manufactured open-ended coaxial probe was
demonstrated to be valid for the measurement of the complex
permittivity of fluids, we evaluated its potential for measuring
the permittivity of granular media. Glass beads effective
permittivity has been successfully modeled with the 2-phase
Maxwell Garnett equation (1) for solid spherical inclusions in
a fluid background by other authors [26], [27]. The complex
permittivity of monosize randomly packed 1 and 2 mm glass
beads in air and distilled water at 19ºC was measured with the
self-manufactured probe. In Fig. 4 the real part of the
measured permittivity of glass beads is presented, showing
practically no dispersion between 50 and 500 MHz, as
expected for non-conducting media with spherical particles.
The effective permittivity calculated with the Maxwell
Garnett equation considering air and water as backgrounds
and glass beads as inclusions for porosities of 0.4 and 0.5 is
also presented for comparison. This is the porosity range
where randomly packed 1 and 2 mm glass beads should be,
according to the literature [28]–[30]. As shown in Fig. 5, the
real permittivity of glass beads in air is not affected by the
particle size and the measured values are well fitted to the
Maxwell-Garnett estimation for both 0.4 and 0.5 porosities.
Different behavior is observed for glass beads in distilled
water, where the real permittivity of 1 mm glass beads can be
found around ε’ ≈ 32.69, whereas for 2 mm glass beads it
raises to ε’ ≈ 38.2. To have an effective permittivity of εeff ≈
32.69 with the Maxwell Garnett model, a porosity of 0.42 –
0.43 is needed, which is in agreement with the porosity values
reported by Yu et al. [29] and Feng and Yu [28] for 1 mm glass
beads. In case of 2 mm glass beads, a porosity of 0.51 would
be expected from Maxwell Garnett for εeff ≈ 38.2, a value
slightly higher than the possible ones found in the
bibliography. This means that the field penetration depth of
the probe allows to successfully measure the bulk dielectric
properties of granular media within 1 mm from the probe end
and that for 2 mm the field penetration is not enough to
provide a significant bulk measurement, also due to edge
effects being dominant.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
We have evaluated the performance of a self-
manufactured open-ended coaxial probe for determining the
complex permittivity of liquid samples and granular media in
the 10 to 900 MHz frequency range. The probe was
manufactured by cutting-off a coaxial adapter and
smoothening its open end. The probe has been calibrated using
a bi-linear equation with OWL standards. We evaluated the
accuracy of the complex permittivity estimation by varying

Fig. 5. Real permittivity of 1 and 2 mm Glass Beads (GB) in air and distilled
water at 19ºC, and Maxwell Garnett effective permittivity of a mixture of
GB with air or distilled water as background for different porosities (ϕ).
the liquid standard in the calibration and found the ethylene
glycol to provide the lowest error, with a RMSE = 0.8948
when comparing the estimations in the test liquids with the
reference values of the literature. The self-manufactured probe
has been compared with the Speag DAK-12 commercial
model. The performance of both probes is nearly comparable
above 50 MHz and limited below 50 MHz to determine the
complex permittivity of materials. The self-manufactured
probe, paired with the Agilent 4395A VNA, has been proven
to provide reliable measurements of the complex permittivity
between 50 MHz and 500 MHz with a maximum ME of
0.6462 and 0.7753 in the real and imaginary parts,
respectively. The complex permittivity of glass beads has
been measured with the experimental probe to evaluate its
applicability to granular media. The real part of the measured
permittivity has been compared to the effective permittivity
estimated with the Maxwell Garnett model for 2-phase
mixtures. The probe’s field penetration depth has been
determined to be between 1 and 2 mm, which would limit its
application to fine grained media. Further work is needed to
determine the field penetration depth of the experimental
probe more precisely, which could be approached by using
finite elements simulations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank Juan Antonio Albaladejo for his
help in machining the experimental probe.
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